Backwoods Home Magazine is about to become a print magazine again after a one-year hiatus as a digital-only publication. The person who is making this possible is my son, Sam Duffy, who will assume the role of publisher, a job I have had since founding BHM 29 years ago.… Read the rest

Pull into the driveway of any rural farm or homestead and you are bound to be greeted by a dog or two. Dogs become an integral part of many homesteads as livestock and property guardians or hunting dogs.… Read the rest

Residents of the Great Plains, it is said, had an imagination as fertile as their soil. In trying to get settlers to the Midwest in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a newspaper ad read: “Tickle the land with a hoe and watch your crops laugh all the way through the harvest!”

Sometimes when I drive into town I look around and think to myself, “One day this could all be different.” There have been countless zombie apocalypse, EMP blackout, and alien invasion television shows, but it’s doubtful that something like that would really happen.… Read the rest

It began with the prick of a thorn. Within a few days, the 35-year-old man from South India had an abscess swelling from the fleshy mound on his right palm at the base of his thumb, a raging fever, was exceptionally drowsy, and was having difficulty breathing.… Read the rest

In the middle of summertime, plants are producing. Berry plants produce berries, and flowering plants produce blossoms. The God-given purpose for the plants in producing the colorful display of fruit and flowers in the summer is to perpetuate itself — to produce young plants.… Read the rest

I really enjoy spending quiet time in my vegetable garden. Preparing the soil in the spring, planning where the vegetables will go, turning the compost pile and finding tons of worms, even weeding to keep a tidy garden are all enjoyable tasks.… Read the rest